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General Strike Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak Published Online: 17 Dec 2013 This article was downloaded by: [University of Oslo] On: 14 March 2014, At: 03:17 Publisher: Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK Rethinking Marxism: A Journal of Economics, Culture & Society Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rrmx20 General Strike Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak Published online: 17 Dec 2013. To cite this article: Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (2014) General Strike, Rethinking Marxism: A Journal of Economics, Culture & Society, 26:1, 9-14, DOI: 10.1080/08935696.2014.857839 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08935696.2014.857839 PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the “Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of the Content. This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub- licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http:// www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions Downloaded by [University of Oslo] at 03:17 14 March 2014 Rethinking Marxism, 2014 Vol. 26, No. 1, 9–14, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08935696.2014.857839 General Strike Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak This article is an account of the development of the concept of the general strike— as well as some of its modifications—primarily in Western Europe. The author encourages the continued rethinking of the concept even as it has seen varying expressions in practice throughout its development. Key Words: Chartism, Epistemology, General Strike, Imperialism, International Work- ingmen’s Association The idea of downing tools in order to disable the master’s enterprise is obviously not a new one. What was new about the Marxist use of the idea of the “general strike” can be found in volume 1 of Capital (1867), where Marx wanted to bring about an epistemological change in workers so they would know that they were, together, “the agent of production,” and that if they stopped, then production stopped. This basic idea had always been implicit in any notion of the general strike, but that it involved a specific change of mind in workers had not been so clearly perceived. Earlier manifestations had seen society divided into the toilers and the idle, and work stoppage was exhorted without drawing specific connections between cause and effect. What follows is an account of the European phenomenon of the general strike and its use by Marxism. There are also examples of work stoppage in the Mughal mints in the late eighteenth century, and it is certain that corresponding phenomena can be located elsewhere in the world. But if we accept that the industrial revolution Downloaded by [University of Oslo] at 03:17 14 March 2014 started in Britain and that the bourgeois revolution and its consequences happened in France, then it is in Western Europe we must look. In the French eighteenth century, although there was a good deal of writing about the general strike (Jean Meslier, 1664–1729, Mirabeau, 1749–91, and many others), the other revolutionary alternative—seizing state power by violent means—was preferred. This is seen both in the French Revolution of 1789 and the subsequent revolutions in 1848 and 1871 (the Paris Commune). Marx saw a fulfillment of his epistemological project in the Silesian textile workers’ strike of 1844. He contrasted it to earlier strikes in France (for example, the strike in Lyon in 1834) and suggested that the earlier strikers were interested in political change alone, whereas the Silesian workers had class consciousness and were working for change in social relations. © 2013 Association for Economic and Social Analysis 10 SPIVAK In Britain the initiator of the idea of a general strike is usually thought to be William Benbow (1784–1841), who proposed a “national holiday”—a month away from work—again without any detailed discussion of the connection between this cause and the effect of bringing the masters down. This confronted the idea that the work of revolution was to gain state power through insurrection and armed struggle. In Britain all through the nineteenth century, the main motor for the transition from feudalism to capitalism was reform. The Reform Bill of 1832 was the beginning of a series of labor laws. Somewhat apart from the general reformist impulse, though also connected to it, was the British movement called Chartism. Named after the People’s Charter (1838; see also the London Working Men’s Association), Chartists made the following political demands: 1. A vote for every man over the age of twenty-one 2. A secret ballot 3. No property qualification for members of Parliament 4. Payment for MPs (so that poor men could serve) 5. Constituencies of equal size 6. Annual elections for Parliament The role of women in early Chartism was not feminist in its impulse but was certainly militant in its solidarity with the men. It will be noticed that these were reformist political demands. In 1842, however, in response to terrible working conditions, particularly in mining, a general strike spread into industrial and commercial labor all through northern England. The cautious Chartist leaders abandoned the strikers with abundant expressions of support and sympathy. It was later claimed that the reforms of 1846 in Britain were a result of the general strike, however remotely. Marx spoke on behalf of the “Brussels Democrats” at a Chartist public meeting in 1846, arguing for an international workers’ coalition. He spoke again at the inauguration of the International Workingmen’s Association (IWMA; the Chartists had lacked the adjective “international”) in 1864. He was not, however, espousing the general strike. His approach was more theoretical, urging the centralization of the Downloaded by [University of Oslo] at 03:17 14 March 2014 means of production and the socialization of labor. In his view of the 1860s, in order to be able to combat international capitalism, the worker must “master the mysteries of international politics, to watch the diplomatic acts of their respective govern- ments, to counteract them, if necessary” (Marx 1974, 81). In Russia, Mikhail Bakunin (1814–76) is usually credited with formulating the idea of the general strike, although his main contribution to radical thought was the idea of anarchism. Bakunin (1985, 149) was against any involvement with politics as such and thought of strikes as raising the socialist-revolutionary consciousness of the working class: “The news of the European workers’ movement can be summed up in one word: strikes.” In 1872, Marx had Bakunin removed from the IWMA largely because of his perceived utopianism. More related to the Bakuninist legacy and to the work of the later Georges Sorel (1847–1922) rather than to orthodox Marxism, anarcho-syndicalism in Europe—with its basically antistatist position and its confidence in a basically union-led series of KEYWORDS 11 general strikes as the agency of revolution—must be counted within Marxism in a broad sense. We approach Sorel’s work with caution since, in recommending violent general strikes as a “myth” mobilizing the proletariat, he moved away from Marx’s epistemological project and toward the heroics of fascism. The general strike was also thought to be an instrument of protesting war, since the eruption of European imperialist wars was a phenomenon that started in the mid- nineteenth century. As it turns out, workers did not rise against wars. Marx was not himself a supporter of this particular idea, as we find in his famous letter to Engels of 16 September 1868, referring to “the Belgian nonsense that it was necessary to strike against war.” Hence, the division of strikes into three categories—revolutionary strikes for bringing about communism, political strikes for the grabbing of state power, and reformist strikes for social democratic change—did not really apply to the thoughts of Marx and Engels. It is correct to say, however, that anarchist tendencies, anarcho-syndicalist tendencies, and social democratic tendencies (Rosa Luxemburg, Antonio Gramsci, et al.) are an important part of the Marxist tradition. The anarcho- syndicalist tradition crossed the Atlantic and animated the Industrial Workers of the World (the Wobblies), established in the United States in 1903. The 1877 strike in St. Louis and the 1886 strikes in Chicago had presaged this development, although the latter ended in unorganized violence perhaps unjustly attributed to the anarchist movement. It is within this narrative of volatile, conjuncturally responsive transformations that one must pay attention to Rosa Luxemburg’s recoding of the importance of the general strike—or “mass strike” as she called it to distinguish her political position— as social democratic instrument, after her experience of the 1905 revolution in Russia, which was the culmination of a series of general strikes starting with the great general strike of the textile workers in St. Petersburg in 1896 and 1897.
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